Only 16% of Washington’s Social Workers are Male – and It’s a Real Problem

We are hurting from social work’s lack of gender diversity and its disinterest in men’s equality. Bringing more men into the field would improve the way it deals with family and parenting issues.

Note: This piece is an adaptation of Jack Kammer’s article “Social Work’s Gender Problem,” originally published in 2016 at Governing.com.

Protests across the nation have forced us to confront toxic relations between police departments and the citizens they are sworn to serve. With many troubled urban communities being primarily black and their police departments being overwhelmingly white, “we/they” thinking hampers cooperation, heightens police officers’ fear and defensiveness, worsens the risk of police over-reaction, and leaves many citizens feeling abused and mistreated.

We are beginning to see the importance of diversity and inclusiveness as an antidote. We are coming to understand that we need more black police officers, especially in police work with black citizens.

With that in mind, this seems an opportune time to take notice of a similar and intricately connected problem that needs to be put on the stove at least to simmer. The lack of gender diversity among America’s social workers is an issue of profound importance that gets little attention.

Surely if there is social value in ensuring that more women are professionally involved as engineers building roads and bridges, there is social value in ensuring that more men are professionally involved as social workers building families and communities.

How are social workers like police officers?

State and local departments of social services are like police departments in important ways. Both enforce policies and regulations that can have lasting and deeply emotional impacts on the people they deal with. Both have discretion and must use good judgment in handling the cases in front of them. Both are vulnerable to having their actions and decisions swayed by stereotypes and bias. And both have a diversity problem.

Social work’s diversity problem may be even worse than law enforcement’s. While minorities make up more than 27% of police departments nationwide, men make up 17% of the ranks of social workers, according to federal data.

A look at social work degree programs in universities nationwide suggests that the trend continues in the wrong direction. According to the Council on Social Work Education, just 13% of the recipients of master’s degrees in social work in 2020 identified as male. (Social workers with masters degrees are the ones doing most of the policy design and delivery in the field.) In 1964, the figure was 42%.

Washington’s lack of gender diversity in social work

According to the Washington State Department of Health, only 15% of Washington’s licensed social workers are male. At the University of Washington, males were 16% of all Masters of Social Work graduates between 2013 and 2021. For the 2020-2021 academic year, that proportion dipped to a mere 10%.

Year	Female	Male	% Male of Total
2012-2013	238	38	14%
2013-2014	200	45	18%
2014-2015	222	49	18%
2015-2016	228	42	16%
2016-2017	218	42	16%
2017-2018	239	49	17%
2018-2019	242	54	18%
2019-2020	244	45	16%
2020-2021	247	26	10%
2012-2021	2,078	390	16%

At Eastern Washington University, a mere 15% of the 500 Masters of Social Work graduates over the last four years have been male. There is no reason to think the proportion of male graduates is higher for schools of social work at other universities around the state.

What is the field of social work doing to improve its gender diversity?

Ironically, a field that loudly proclaims its commitment to diversity and inclusiveness lags far behind one that is often thought to be insular, secretive, and conservative. Law enforcement is taking concrete, meaningful action to address its diversity problem. Social work is doing nothing of the sort.

The result is that the field of social work does a poor job of dealing with family issues in ways that take into account the needs of both men and women — and the children they parent. As a 2015 study of social work practices in Connecticut reported, some fathers complained that “being male put them at a disadvantage and that case workers often took the side of the mother before initial contact with the father was made.” Nearly two decades ago, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote that “the far greater crime rate among Afro-American men must in great part be explained by their unmarried and largely unpartnered existence.” In 2013, British researchers found that while “friends are equally important to men and women… family matters more for men’s well-being.”

Supportive services for parenting and other social relationships are the functional charge and ethical duty of social work, but the field has proven to be disinterested and ill-equipped to deal with relationship inequality between men and women, fathers and mothers. Schools of social work seem to have little interest in the issue. After a long teaching career and a systematic review of a decade’s worth of journal articles and textbooks, Jordan Kosberg, a professor of social work at the University of Alabama, concluded that “social workers do not receive necessary preparation for understanding and working with heterosexual males.”

Social work explains its gender problem by saying that men are motivated by high salaries, which social work does not provide, while women are motivated by caring. This sweeping sentiment points to the fundamental problem: The field is ambivalent about whether men belong in its ranks. If it resolved to do so, social work could attract men by assuring them they would be welcome and their perspectives valued in a field that desperately needs more maleness.

Police work is too white. Social work is too pink. At the insistence of City Hall, law enforcement is dealing with its diversity problem. Social work needs similar motivation to deal with its own.

If there is social value in ensuring that more women are professionally involved as engineers building roads and bridges, surely there is social value in ensuring that more men are professionally involved as social workers building families and communities.

Jack Kammer is a social worker and advocate for gender diversity in social services. Find his podcasts and articles at Male Friendly Media.

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